IRS Calls Outlaw Country Legend By A New Name: Convicted Felon

Country singer David Allan Coe, whose website proclaims he is “incapable of separating the good from the ridiculous,” will be on a fundraising tour for the Internal Revenue Service the next time he plays after a court ordered the 76-year-old singer to pay the IRS almost $1 million.

“Mr. Coe chose to impede and obstruct the due administration of the IRS in an effort to brush aside his duty to file and pay taxes and is now a convicted felon,” IRS agent Kathy Enstrom said.

Prosecutors said Coe avoided taxes by being paid in cash for 100 concerts between 2008 and 2013. Instead of paying taxes with his earnings, Coe used the money for “other debts and gambling,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in September, when Coe pleaded guilty.

The news release said Coe, who performs about 100 times a year, arranged to be paid primarily in cash but didn’t allow $50 bills because “he believed they were bad luck and would not gamble with them.”

The singer avoided jail time at his sentencing Monday but faces three years’ probation.

Coe, part of the outlaw country movement, had a 1975 hit with “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” and wrote songs others took to the top of the charts, including “Take This Job and Shove It,” which was recorded by Johnny Paycheck. Neither Coe nor his attorney had any comment on the sentence.

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The last comment posed on Coe’s Facebook page, from June 6, read simply, “Trying like the devil to find the lord.”